


Mechanisburg in the Sky

by Feneris



Series: Mechanisburg in the Sky [1]
Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Floating Mechanisburg AU, Floating cities, Gen, Mechanisburg, The Black Mist Raiders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 07:35:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19942531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feneris/pseuds/Feneris
Summary: Coming out of the Madness is a lot like a morning with a hangover. Especially the part where you try to piece together just what exactly you did last night and why you thought it was a good idea.To be fair, Barry Heterodyne had been under a lot of stress the past year. The news that Petrus Teufel and the Black Misit raiders were going around killing entire towns with toxic gas weapons was just the last straw. Memories are rather fuzzy from there. He remembers fixing the castle, going into the Jagerhall and rallying the Jagers, ringing the Doom Bell and summoning the town. He vaguely remembers standing at the castle square and giving a speech. He also remembers “escaping the tyranny of geography” being a major part of that speech. He also remembers assuring the Mechanisburg Chamber of Commerce not to worry, that they would be taking the river with them.





	Mechanisburg in the Sky

It had started as a good day for the Black Mist Raiders. They had caught the town of Slenzburg completely by surprise. A perfect raid. Drop the gas bombs, wait until everyone in the town was dead, then send down the looting parties and haul the plunder back to the airships. 

It had been calm sky as they regrouped in preparation for their next target. A few of the crews had even been celebrating. The sound came like a thunderclap out of nowhere. 

**DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM**

Petrus Teufel had felt so small then. So very small and utterly insignificant. His vision blurred, black danced across his eyes, and he very nearly passed out. Most of his crew did. 

In one moment half the fleet was disabled as their crews were knocked out cold by a single blast of sonic despair. The then flaming clanks burst out of a cloud-bank. 

Teufel had heard about the Torchmen, every airman had. Everyone stayed well away from Mechanisburg because of it. That was one town every raider knew was just not worth it. 

Except they were nowhere near Mechanisburg. That bloody valley was over a thousand kilometers away. 

“Captain! Y-you have to see this!” One of the lookouts called out through the radio. “It’s huge!” 

Teufel grabbed his own telescope and peered in the direction the lookout was pointing. At first he thought they must have somehow lost altitude without anyone noticing, and that they are close enough to the ground to be within range of a town’s anti-air defences. 

Then he realizes it's not that they have lost altitude, it's that the town has gained it. There is an entire town floating through the sky like an island in the clouds. There’s walls, fields, even a river flowing through the town before dropping off the edge towards the ground below. 

“EVASIVE MANEUVERS!” He calls out, as the town’s guns open fire. The Gibbering Savant and the Howzit burst into flames as the town closes into firing range. “READY THE GAS CANISTERS AND CLOSE IN TO BOMBING RANGE!”

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which town this is. The giant gold trilobite on the castle tells it all. Red Fire take all Heterodynes, old and new! 

As if to emphasize the point the castle seems to shake, then gates open up all over its surface and monsters of all shapes and sizes begin pouring out.

—

Coming out of the Madness is a lot like a morning with a hangover. Especially the part where you try to piece together just what exactly you did last night, why you thought it was a good idea, and the slow, horrible realization you are not going to be able to just forget about this and move on. 

To be fair, Barry Heterodyne had been under a lot of stress the past year. Between Lucrenzia’s betrayal, the frantic rush to stop her mad plans, constantly worrying about little Klaus and Agatha, and coming back to Europa only to find that all of their hard work had been for nothing, Barry had been wound tighter than an overstretched elastic snail. 

The news that Petrus Teufel and the Black Misit raiders were going around killing entire towns with toxic gas weapons was just the last straw. Memories are rather fuzzy from there. He remembers fixing the castle, going into the Jagerhall and rallying the Jagers, ringing the Doom Bell and summoning the town. He vaguely remembers standing at the castle square and giving a speech. He also remembers “escaping the tyranny of geography” being a major part of that speech. He also remembers assuring the Mechanisburg Chamber of Commerce not to worry, that they would be taking the river with them. 

And then he had apparently floated the entire town and gone off to hunt down the Black Mist Raiders. 

He has an ominous feeling he has just made a huge mistake. 

Not the kind of mistake that was going to get everyone in Mechanisburg slaughtered. Not even close. The Black Mist Raiders may have been used to massacring entire towns, but they had never encountered anything like Mechanisburg. This was not the first time Mechanisburg had been gassed, and the town was well prepared for such an attack. The APNHAD had been going nonstop since the fighting started, and the boom bellows were taking care of anything the APNHAD couldn’t neutralize. The toxic contaminants clean-up crews were hard at work mopping up the rest before they could become a real problem, and really some of the nastier toxins just seemed to make the carnivorous plants even stronger. 

Half the raiders’ fleet has already been disabled and the rest are being picked off by the Mechanisburg gunners and the castle monsters. They had even managed to harpoon several airships and were cranking them in close enough that local ground forces could board. The Jagers were even using gliders to board some of the other ships. 

It was like a scene out of history. That was the problem. Him and Bill had worked hard to change things. To bury Mechanisburg’s legacy of murder, terror, and wanton bloodshed. To change the town from a place of terror to a place of peace. And it hadn’t taken much to switch it back. Petrus Teufel and the Black Mist Raiders needed to be dealt with, but Barry can’t shake the feeling that he’s just undone everything he and Bill tried to do and reawakened the bloodlust they had tried so hard to suppress. 

A few of the raiders had tried landing boarding parties in the city itself, but they are quickly discovering just how foolish that was. He watched as one group was chased down the street by a group of Mechanisburgers. No doubt the Castle thought it sufficiently amusing to refrain from merely dropping the raiders through a hole in the street straight to the ground below. The fact that the Mechanisburgers were chanting something about flaying the enemies of Mechanisburg alive probably had something to do with it. 

It was the official chant of the Mechanisburg Seamstresses Guild if her recalled correctly. 

—

The defeat of the Black Mist Raiders was not actually the bloodbath he feared it would be. Many of the raiders had been knocked unconscious by the first peal of the Doom Bell and had come-to to find themselves surrounded by savagely grinning Mechanisburgers pointing weapons at them. Teufel had been killed, and Barry had had to stop several people from mounting his head on a spike above the Gate of Monsters. The same applied to the heads of many of the raiders who had been killed in the attack. 

They will face justice. The friends and family of their victims deserve that much. But the hows and wheres of that will be decided by a proper legal court, not by a bloodthirsty mob in the throes of victory. There is however, also the practical matter as to what to do with what the citizens of Mechanisburg jovially refer to as the swag. 

They had captured over a dozen airships completely intact and twice that number who needed repairs before they are air-worthy again. He’s going to need those ships if he’s going to keep Mechanisburg floating through the sky. The citizens of Mechanisburg are already at work constructing boom-docks and hanger bays to house the ships. The only thing they need is people with the skills and experience to crew them. He already has a list of former acquaintances in mind.

Then there is the chemical weapons they seized from the ships. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Each one more horrifying than the last. It would take decades to safely dispose of them all. He would have to store them in the Castle, there was no other place he would trust to store them safely. What was a few hundred canisters of horrific chemical weapons after all, compared to some of the things his ancestors were already storing in there. 

The rest could be left for Carson to sort out. That even includes the baby they found in a sealed cradle on Tuefel’s flagship. Mechanisburg already has traditions in place for how loot is to be divided up and who will take in orphans from both sides of the battlefield. And whatever his opinions are on its necessity, it is a good system that works. 

The big question is what to do next. The town elders have already been summoned to the map room in the castle so that they can plot their next course. Where is not an issue, it's what they want to do there that is important. News of the defeat of the Black Mist Raiders is already spreading at a speed only juicy gossip is capable of reaching. 

Europa is a mess right now. There is no avoiding it. The speed at which it all fell apart is nearly crushing. But there is also hope. People have heard of his return and are hoping that maybe, just maybe the bad times won’t last. And, as he thinks of his nephew and niece, there comes a steel conviction that they will grow up in a better world than he did. 

He will do whatever it takes to make that possible.


End file.
